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The word 'anointed', which is all that Messiah literally means, is used in many different places in the bible to refer to a variety of people and things, as it says in the article you linked to:

It is used throughout the Hebrew Bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals and objects; for example, a Jewish king,[1 Kings 1:39] Jewish priests,[Lev. 4:3] and prophets,[Isa. 61:1] the Jewish Temple and its utensils,[Ex. 40:9-11] unleavened bread,[Num. 6:15] and a non-Jewish king (Cyrus king of Persia).

There's also a specific meaning of Messiah and that's the one most people have heard about:

In Jewish eschatology, the term came to refer to a future Jewish King from the Davidic line, who will be "anointed" with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age.[...]Traditional and current Orthodox thought have mainly held that the Messiah will be the anointed one (messiah), descended from his father through the Davidic line of King David via Solomon, who will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, have a male heir and re-institute the Sanhedrin, among other things. Source

Jewish people believe in a Messiah, but not as a savior like Christianity. Judaism's Messiah is a charismatic leader, who inspires others to follow his example and brings peace to the world. He will be a presently living human being, not a god, supernatural figure, or deceased person.

So Jesus wasn't a charismatic Jewish leader who inspired others to follow his example in an egalitarian effort to bring peace to the world?

He's exactly that. He wasn't a god or supernatural being either. It perfectly fits the description. That's whats so funny about the canon of the Jewish religion. Jesus is totally the fulfillment of the prophecy of the jewish messiah. It's crazy how such a little difference in the interpretation of an ancient book can shape world events for a long time.

He kind of wasn't, actually. Ancient Hebrews believed the messiah would be a person of power, either a military leader or something of the like. And a staggering majority of ancient Hebrews did not believe the messiah had to suffer.

The fact that Jesus hung around with the dregs (the poor, the sick, prostitutes, etc.) of society made the claim that he was the messiah really offensive to the Hebrews of the time. It would be the equivalent of calling God a junkie. And the whole "suffering for the sins of the world" thing was a real stretch. A small group of people cherry picked scripture and then applied it to something that it wasn't relevant to, and came up with the concept that the messiah was going to suffer. It was not even remotely a mainstream belief. More like the Westboro Baptist Church in relation to the rest of Christianity (although minus the hate).

This is what the Jewish Bible says will happen when the Messiah comes and what the Messiah will achieve in his lifetime:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift sword against nation and they will no longer study warfare. (Isaiah 2:4)

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9)

First of all, by the time they were talking about Cyrus...Persia had splintered. "Cyrus the Great" was Assyrian, and so was his grandson, also named Cyrus. At the time the passage was written, the grandson, Cyrus the 5th or 7th or something, was ruling over the Jews. They hated him, but he occasionally checked in on their scribes so they wrote it as a backlash at him that they couldn't really get away with it, a sort of sarcasm. Within about 20 years of that passage in the Old Testament being written, the Jews rebelled behind Judas Maccabeas, and when their rebellion didn't fail and candle oil lasted really long they founded the tradition of Hannukah. The whole picture. Edit: tl;dr - They were not talking about Cyrus the Great, they were talking about Cyrus the Great's grandson, Cyrus, neither of whom were Persian. It was the equivalent of sarcasm, they hated him and rebelled against him soon after.

Antiochus was a Seleucid. Alexander the Great (who identified as Macedonian, not Greek) didn't leave his empire to any heirs so it was carved up into basically a bunch of military dictatorships. Antiochus was one such dictator who took control as the empire fell apart. Antiochus's kingdom had basically no relation to the relatively enlightened and free Greek empire.

Yeah, I think he's got the Persians and Assyrians muddled together somehow. Not really sure how Trained2144 came up with that story.

Sorry to get off on a tangent but I've always wondered why the story of Hanukkah is almost always told as "Jews revolted against Greeks". That's how it was taught to me in Hebrew school.

I didn't care much about the overly simplistic explanation until I read a rant by a "journalist" who was claiming that the Maccabees were a bunch of theocratic religious zealots who wanted to topple the enlightened democracy that was Greek rule. He went on to imply that Jews should be ashamed to celebrate Hanukkah.

Obviously, that's not what you were trying to say at all. Just a cautionary tale of what seemingly inconsequential historical misconceptions can lead to.

Checked the passage I was commenting on. I actually mixed up Cyrus with Anitochus, apologies there, but everything else was correct. The Maccabees indeed were religious extremists who started a rebellion that eventually succeeded. Cyrus the Great's empire in Persia fell apart when he bequeathed various sections of the empire to his children. Cyrus was a descendent of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Alexander, though he did spread Hellenistic Greek influence, was not Greek. Many confuse Macedonia with a Greek province or city state, it was not. Antiochus was a descendent of both Alexander and more recently Cyrus, but he was the leader of Assyria, not Persia. That's Antiochus who was leader of Assyria, Cyrus was of Persia, which was the mistake I made, to be clear.

Yes, the Maccabees were extremists but my point was that they were fighting against a tyrant who desecrated the temple and tried making the practice of Judaism punishable by death. As far as I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, their goal was only to be allowed to practice their religion in peace, not to kill anyone who didn't believe in it.